[FIXED] How to handle static content in Spring MVC?

Issue

I am developing a webapp using Spring MVC 3 and have the DispatcherServlet catching all requests to '/' like so (web.xml):

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>app</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
  </servlet>

  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>app</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

Now this works as advertised, however how can I handle static content? Previously, before using RESTful URLs, I would have caught all *.html for example and sent that to the DispatcherServlet, but now it's a different ball game.

I have a /static/ folder which includes /styles/, /js/, /images/ etc and I would like to exclude /static/* from the DispatcherServlet.

Now I could get static resources working when I did this:

  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>app</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/app/</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

But I want it to have nice URLs (the point of me using Spring MVC 3) not the landing page being www.domain.com/app/

I also don't want a solution coupled to tomcat or any other servlet container, and because this is (relatively) low traffic I don't need a webserver (like apache httpd) infront.

Is there a clean solution to this?

Solution

Since I spent a lot of time on this issue, I thought I'd share my solution. Since spring 3.0.4, there is a configuration parameter that is called <mvc:resources/> (more about that on the reference documentation website) which can be used to serve static resources while still using the DispatchServlet on your site's root.

In order to use this, use a directory structure that looks like the following:

src/
 springmvc/
  web/
   MyController.java
WebContent/
  resources/
   img/
    image.jpg
  WEB-INF/
    jsp/
      index.jsp
    web.xml
    springmvc-servlet.xml

The contents of the files should look like:

src/springmvc/web/HelloWorldController.java:

package springmvc.web;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class HelloWorldController {

 @RequestMapping(value="/")
 public String index() {
  return "index";
 }
}

WebContent/WEB-INF/web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee 
         http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

 <servlet>
  <servlet-name>springmvc</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
  <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
 </servlet>

 <servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>springmvc</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

WebContent/WEB-INF/springmvc-servlet.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
 xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

    <!-- not strictly necessary for this example, but still useful, see http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/mvc.html#mvc-ann-controller for more information -->
 <context:component-scan base-package="springmvc.web" />

    <!-- the mvc resources tag does the magic -->
 <mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />

    <!-- also add the following beans to get rid of some exceptions -->
 <bean      class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />
 <bean
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping">
 </bean>

    <!-- JSTL resolver -->
 <bean id="viewResolver"
  class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
  <property name="viewClass"
   value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView" />
  <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
  <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
 </bean>

</beans>

WebContent/jsp/index.jsp:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<h1>Page with image</h1>
<!-- use c:url to get the correct absolute path -->
<img src="<c:url value="/resources/img/image.jpg" />" />

Hope this helps :-)

Answered By - Joris